Wait! I HAD 1100 followers when I posted that infographic, but I just went to my account to confirm the number and looks like I’m up to 1800 now. 🙂

OK, back to my experiment…

Within 2 days of posting, the image was shared over 100 times and I didn’t even expect that much.

Three weeks later, the number of pins/shares totaled over 3,000 — meaning 3,000 people shared/pinned this image to their own Pinterest boards.

And of course, the image links back to the page on my site where the images is hosted.

See the screenshot below showing the number of Pins.

For the record, the image was only pinned about 200 times directly from my followers.

The remaining 2,800+ pins came from followers of my followers. So I had a bit of viral action going on!

Now to you Pinterest pros out there, these numbers may look small-ish, but I was happy with the results from my little creation. 🙂

What About Traffic?

Did I get 3,000 visits from those 3,000 pins?

No. Not even close.

This image is still bringing in traffic from Pinterest everyday. But the total amount of visitors in a 3-week period is about 500 or so.

So that’s not a lot of traffic in three weeks (relative to the traffic the site gets and how many times the image was pinned). However, there are a lot of things I could have done differently to maximize the exposure.

For example, I added it to a Page instead of a Post.

As you probably know, when you create a Page in WordPress, it doesn’t go out to your blog feed or email list. So there were no notifications sent out when I launched the page.

I also should have added more content to the page to make it juicier so it would be “Post worthy”.

Low Expectations. High Hopes.

To be honest, I hadn’t seen any natural hair-related infographics on Pinterest before so I wasn’t really sure how mine would be received.

Now that I know people in that niche like this kind of stuff, I have a lot of different ideas for how I can incorporate infographics within existing articles to help illustrate points, educate, etc.

With natural hair being such a visual niche, I think there may be some added potential if I’m a little more strategic with my execution.

There are so many things I could have done and I’m looking forward to testing some more.

Not to mention, I really enjoy creating the images. If nothing else, maybe I can create Photoshop templates for people and sell them.

But that’s a whole other blog post! 🙂

Creating Your Own Infographics

If you know your way around Photoshop, GIMP or any graphic editor, you have a big advantage because you can create your own images for free.

There are no limitations to what you can do.

However, if you don’t have software or don’t care to learn, no worries. There are several sites out there that will let you create your own infographics like PiktoChart or Easel.ly.

Want more options? This site has a list of over 20 infographic creation sites and tools.

And if you don’t mind outsourcing, you can hire a graphic designer at Dribbble.com. Yes, that’s “dribble” with 3 B’s. 🙂

More Tips for Creating Infographics

The images are supposed to be easy and fun to read. Don’t make it too text-heavy or it defeats the purpose. It shouldn’t look like a blog post.

Most infographics you’ve seen probably display stats, but they don’t have to present that kind of data. You can make an instructographic like I did with the one above.

Think of information that is relevant to your audience and break it down into digestible bites of information.

Brand your image with your site URL. Remember, when it’s shared on Pinterest, the image will become clickable and take the person to your web page where the image is located. Even if the image is shared on places where it won’t be clickable, it never hurts to add a call to action. Branding, branding, branding!

If you add statistical data to your image, be sure to cite the sources somewhere on the image.

Use Google images (search for infographics) to get inspiration and ideas for your own designs.

Use them as informational teasers and direct people to your site for more info.

Is This Worth Your Time?

There’s only one way to know and that’s to experiment like I’m doing.

As I’ve already mentioned, there were quite a few things I could have done differently to maximize the exposure, but I was pretty happy with the results of my first infographic creation that took me less than one hour to create.

This seems to be worth my time for my hair site because it’s such a visual niche — the perfect environment for Pinterest.

The other thing I love about Pinterest is I spend less than 15-20 minutes per month pinning other people’s pictures and my own, and it’s my 3rd most popular traffic source for Napturally Curly.

Once you unlock the formula for the right kind of image/content to pin, you can reap the rewards.

But I also believe this can work with all kinds of sites if the image is eye-catching and interesting.

There are a lot of infographics shared related to Internet marketing, social media, etc. So I’m going to be experimenting on this site too.

Cynthia Sanchez, a self-proclaimed Pinterest addict and owner of OhSoPinteresting.com (I love the name!), even created an entire business around the site and she’s ready to help you — so check her out!

I had the pleasure of meeting her at a local meetup last year. I kept her business card handy so I could give her a shout.

Quality Check

The other item you have to pay attention to is the quality of traffic that Pinterest is sending.

Are people viewing more than one page? How long are they staying on your site? What’s the bounce rate?

Remember, not all visitors are quality traffic.

For my hair site, the average person who comes from Pinterest stays 2-3 minutes, views 2-3 pages and the bounce rate is around 50% — which is right under my site’s average.

So it’s decent quality traffic relative to the rest of my referring sources.

In any event, I will keep playing around with infographics. Whether I will focus more on selling custom templates or using my own to build traffic remains to be seen.

love the way you share your knowledge Content is the only part of any blog for which a user come to your website thats why we can say that content is the king. I am thank ful to you for focusing the lights on the buzzwords. I agree, they should also be kept in mind while creating the content of any blog. Its good to land on your blog. thanks again and keep posting..

That’s right lisa, Pinterst is really an awesome tools to generate a good social media traffic, I am using it on my blog and due to good content user are also sharing it on social site which really make you ranking good.

Pinterest is one of best social networks and it plays an important role to drive massive traffic to blog or website. You shared a great article about pinterest. I like Google+ more as compared to Pinterest. I get more traffic from Google+ as compared to Pinterest.

Not only Pinterest but other social media site Like Twitter are a great way to generate Ref feral traffic on blog. The only big task to generate traffic is to increase your follower. Overall nice helpful post